Historical/Biographical Note

The Tamiment Playhouse, located in Bushkill, Pennsylvania, in the Pocono Mountains, was a prominent incubator of and a major creative outlet for theater, dance, film, and television in the mid-twentieth century, particularly for comedy. Actors such as Danny Kaye, Bea Arthur, Imogene Coca, Dick Shawn, and Carol Burnett, directors Max L. Liebman, Herb Ross, and Joe Layton, choreographers and dancers like Jerome Robbins, and Anita Alvarez, and writers Woody Allen and Neil Simon are a small sampling of the major entertainment figures nurtured at Camp Tamiment. The Playhouse was celebrated for its vibrant weekly original revues, filled with original music, songs, dances, and sketches. Much of this original material performed at Tamiment found its way to the professional stage, Broadway, and finally, television. "Your Show of Shows," one of the best-known programs of television's "Golden Age," had its origins in Tamiment productions.

The Playhouse had its home at Camp Tamiment, which began as a summer resort for socialists and their families. Less than two years after the Camp opened in 1921, campers and staff began to stage amateur theatricals, and a social hall for performances was built. By the early 1930s the Camp had hired a professional entertainment staff theatrical producer, Max Liebman. Out of this grew the professional theatrical productions that became the Tamiment Playhouse. The theater played its last season in 1960, when it was forced to close -- victim of changes in the resort industry, trends and tastes in popular entertainment, and the gradual demise of Camp Tamiment itself (which closed its doors in 1965).

Sources:

• Martha LoMonaco. Every Week, A Broadway Review, the Tamiment Playhouse, 1921-1960(Greenwood Press, 1992)